Building market scans for the better employment of youth

8 May 2018

Plan International’s Youth Employment Solutions (YES) is a programme that helps the younger generation smoothly transition from education to employment. One of the major undertakings of the programme is the creation and use of online market scans, which are invaluable tools for assessing the status and future of markets. Market scans are especially useful in planning for the potential employment of an incoming work force.

Creating a market scan requires the constant monitoring and documenting of a market’s current status in order to create an in-depth analysis. The resulting market scan can then be used to identify the needs of the market, both for consumers and business owners, as well as anticipate future market changes, opportunities and disruptions.

With this in mind, Plan International and QUO joined forces to take on an ambitious new project to create the YES online market scan; a website dedicated to the easy creation and editing of location-specific market scans on a global scale. QUO built the complex online system comprised of carefully developed questions and parameters which could be addressed by Plan International stakeholders from around the world – they simply log in and fill out scans. This input data is then used to create a market scan that helps to determine what employment skills are needed to employ youth in a specific location.

Users have full control over their creation and can authorise who can access and contribute to scans. An automated reminder system notifies contributors about upcoming deadlines and all market scans are automatically saved as they are filled out, meaning there is no need to complete a submission in a single session. Finally, and most importantly, once a scan has been completed, it is then added to an archive of scans in the system whereupon it is made accessible to all logged in members. From there, members can access scans to explore market data and create reports based on their findings directly through the system.

Scans can be chosen and sections rearranged through an intuitive drag-and-drop system. In addition, text content can be added to further explain data and findings. The user’s customised scan can then be exported as a useful and fully-realised PDF report.